Denver Post, CO
09-30-06
Kudos to Iowa St. for hiring Hoffman
By Terry Frei
Denver Post Staff Columnist
The No. 1 victim of the University of Colorado's football "scandal" has rebounded.
No, I'm not referring to the news that former Buffaloes coach Gary Barnett has
landed commentating positions on a couple of Fox Sports Net college football
shows.
Barnett's reputation took a largely unfair hit in the imbroglio. Yet under the
warped standards of evaluation in college football, he lost his job because of
what happened on the field, not off it. His $3 million settlement with the university
was a parachute more golden than the Buffaloes' helmets. If he decides to stay
off the sidelines, he will be an adept analyst.
The irony, of course, would be if he is pressured to take exaggerated positions
"for the sake of argument." That modern mentality about matters both
substantive and trivial caused some of the CU issues on his watch to be grossly
oversimplified and misunderstood. (Plus, the musings of the hapless Boulder
County district attorney, Mary Keenan Lacy, also came into play and were given
undeserved credibility in a media and public rush to judge and, even worse,
stereotype athletes.)
Another hiring involving a CU figure last week didn't get as much play as
Barnett's television gig, but was more significant.
Iowa State University hired Betsy Hoffman as its vice president and
provost.
Dr. Hoffman, 59, deserved another leadership opportunity, and it will come on a
campus where she previously worked as a dean. The position is on the second
tier of the power structure, and she had been provost at the University of IllinoisChicago earlier in her career. This is analogous to a fired head coach returning to
a role as a coordinator.
Hoffman had been keeping a low profile, teaching economics at CU's Denver
campus, which in her case was located somewhere between Limbo and Exile.
With all due respect to current CU president Hank Brown, an adept healer who
has worked the right rooms with the touch of the former politician he is,
Hoffman's departure was a major setback for the cause of higher education in the
state.
Granted, the football mess and Hoffman's reaction to it weren't the sole reasons
for her forced resignation in March 2005. Yet if not for the football controversy,
Hoffman still would be CU president.
In a Friday story in the Iowa State Daily written by Jon Avise, Hoffman said: "I
feel I accomplished a great deal at Colorado."
She's right.
Absolutely, Hoffman made mistakes in handling the "scandal," but they primarily
were the sort of aberrational and sound-bite gaffes that in this era often unfairly
live forever on tape and drown out a body of work. More important, at least to me
as a CU alumnus, Hoffman was an effective fundraiser, advocate and leader in a
state with a disgracefully meager financial commitment to higher education.
As president, she had built up sufficient goodwill in her tenure to survive the
tempest generated by Ward Churchill's abhorrent views - plus his ethnic elasticity
and manipulation of a hiring and tenure system, hypocrisy on free-speech issues
and allegations of shaky academic research.
Coupled with the football issues, though, it was too much.
Hoffman's mild defense of Churchill, including her expressed fear that an
academic "McCarthyism" was coming into play, on the surface was ill-advised.
But considered within the bigger picture of a former arts and sciences dean
defending unfettered intellectual and academic freedom, her position also was
understandable and even defensible.
In the same appearance at the Boulder Faculty Assembly that was viewed by
some of her outside critics as the last straw, Hoffman said there was cause to at
least check out the allegations about Churchill's research. It was absolutely
correct that the publicizing of Churchill's views placed him under the microscope,
and the reason for the scrutiny troubled some faculty members. But Hoffman had
the courage to tell them that ignoring the allegations, which later turned out to be
based in truth, would be irresponsible.
Still, a week later, she was told she was resigning.
Football was part of the mess that cost a good president her job. That was a
bigger loss for CU than anything that happened in a game. And good for Iowa
State for understanding that.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.